The heat will ease any pain and loosen you up. The steam can help open your sinuses and pores. The sauna will dry up any acne one would have, dry out your sinuses if you're snotty. I think the wet heat is better for your muscles than the dry is.

As for my choice of sauna or steam room. I hate both. I'd rather be in the cold. I already have fire in my veins, I don't need to be in a hot room.

Sauna gets the sweat going, steamroom gets the pores open, and shower cleans that **** out, and a cold rinse closes it back up.

However, some advice:

Never spend more than 15 minutes in the sauna or steamroom at a time.

NEVER LIE DOWN IN A SAUNA OR STEAMROOM. You could pass out because the bloodflow would drain out of your head when you sat up. I learned about this from an article on "How to have sex in public places", and it advocated "sitting-up" positions only for sauna or steamroom.

Wear a fucking towel. I don't care if they're old, wrinkly balls or young shiny-smooth ones, I don't wanna see em.

This is a month old thread and my question is not actually on-topic, but I just gotta know, dudemanboy: how hot are the saunas in the US? I'm asking because I've run across some pretty lame excuses for a sauna all over Europe so I'm curious. I'm half-Finnish and half-Russian and that makes for a fairly authentic breeding sauna-wise.

This is a month old thread and my question is not actually on-topic, but I just gotta know, dudemanboy: how hot are the saunas in the US? I'm asking because I've run across some pretty lame excuses for a sauna all over Europe so I'm curious. I'm half-Finnish and half-Russian and that makes for a fairly authentic breeding sauna-wise.

Do you think that all saunas in the US are set to one particular temperature?